the duck keeps its penis inside-out within a sac in its body. When the time for mating arrives, the penis explodes outwards to a fully-erect 20cm, around a quarter of the animal’s total body length. The whole process takes just a third of a second

the duck keeps its penis inside-out within a sac in its body. When the time for mating arrives, the penis explodes outwards to a fully-erect 20cm, around a quarter of the animal’s total body length. The whole process takes just a third of a second

not only that, but they have used trial and error to shape and fasten spears to make them more efficient, almost down to an art. Primitive, but awesome.

**** yeah animals

they've also been known to attack small villages in search of food. i read that a long time ago, may not be true, it was in a book i was reading about mysteries and conspiracy theories, may have been a fabrication by someone, may have been pigmies and not chimps.

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"Music snobbery is the worst kind of snobbery. 'Oh, you like those noises? Those sounds in your ear? Do you like them? They're the wrong sounds. You should like these sounds in your ear.'"
- Dara O'Briain

Capuchins have probably the greatest intellect among monkeys.
In the forests where they live, there are huge anvils made out of rock, the tops worn level with a lip around it's top edge from generations of use by the monkeys for opening nuts.

The particular nuts they like to eat grow miles away in one direction from the anvils so a bunch of monkeys will go and pick them. They select nuts that are ripe and in just the right condition for opening. Nuts that are not ripe are picked and dropped to the floor to ripen quicker and will be picked up a day or two later, when they're ready. Occasionaly, some will be left to grow new nut trees.
This could be loosely defined as crop growing, processing and planning for the future. Or 'farming.' (otherwise known as 'agriculture', in our 200,000 years of existence as a species, we only really started to master this around 12,000 years ago)

Meanwhile, miles away in a completely different direction is a river. The monkeys visit the river regularly because it's the only place they can find suitably hard rocks for use as hammers for opening the nuts.
If the rocks are too big, they are smashed together and broken into smaller pieces that are easier to handle, but they've also been seen using the sharp fragments to pierce things such as tree bark and fruits.
This is fairly advanced 'tool making', (for a monkey) reminicant of flint tools found with the remains of prehistoric man.

The nuts are farmed and brought to the anvils from one direction, the stones used as hammers to open them are found or 'made' and brought in from a different direction and they are all deposited by the anvils where all the monkeys go about using the hammer stones and the anvils to open the nuts providing the whole troop with food.
This is 'industry'.

The nuts are opened and often shared out equally among the group.
This is 'altruism', a form of morality.

The youngsters watch, learn, grow and occasionaly go off to form seperate groups elsewhere with it's own set of anvils nuts and rocks. Seperated from the original group, techniques begin to vary from group to group.
This is 'culture'.

Capuchins also make different noises of warning for different situations.
eg. While they are all occupied in their busy little lives, some are posted as lookouts and when one spots a wild dog, it makes a particular sound and they all run up a tree to avoid it. If it spots an eagle, it makes a different sound and they all dive for cover on the ground, under bushes, under overhanging rocks, in any hollows in the ground they can find. But it doesn't stop there with a simple warning about a threat from the ground or from the air.
They make a different sound for 'wild dog' than they do for 'snake' or for 'cat' and different sounds again for herbivours, in which case they just acknowledge them and move out of their way if they get too close so as to avoid being trampled.
Different noises that have different meanings could obviously be considered as rudimentry 'language'.

So, Capuchin society has tool use, agriculture, industry, altruism, language, culture... some are even known to self medicate by rubbing specifically chosen plants and other substances on their fur, sometimes they get high from such substances, (which suggests an ability to feel pleasue) other times the substances are used more as an insect repellant or, as far as we know, just smells nice. Infact the only 'human' traits they really seem to completely lack are art and religion.

Remember, these are 'monkeys', not apes which are generaly regarded as being far more advanced and intelligent, yet capuchins seem to be so far advanced, we could be tempted to say that they have an almost human type of 'civilisation'.

Another creature I find interesting is the vampire bat because, believe it or not, they appear to possess a rudimentry form of morality.
Vampire bats need to feed on blood every night because their metabolisms are so high that an inactive bat can literaly starve to death within about 40 hours after their last meal, also, their search for blood takes up so much energy that if they fail to find blood, active vampire bats can literally die of starvation within a single night.

Unfortunately, only so many bats in a single colony are successful in first finding a source of blood and then successful in feeding from that source, so when the bats all return to the colony, a number of them will be literaly starving to death.

This is where the vampire bat's 'buddy system' comes in.

A vampire bat will actualy regurgitate some of it's meal for another vampire bat and once this happens, these two bats will form a bond. When one is hungry the other will feed it, but what is to stop a bat from taking advantage, staying in the cave all night not expending any valuable energy and simply being fed by it's buddy?

'Morals' apparently.

This immoral 'lazy bat' behaviour has actualy been observed and recorded in vampire bat colonies but the guilty bat always gets ostracised and thrown out of the colony, which means it will more than likely starve to death unless it becomes very successful at finding blood supplies very quickly.

And that's not all, vampire bats need to stay above a cirtain temperature or they enter hypothermia very easily. Vampire bats that are active naturaly stay above this temperature but a vampire at rest needs the huddled warmth of it's fellow vampire bats to survive just falling asleep, so a vampire bat on it's own is practicaly a dead bat.

If the bat returns, the rest of the colony will continue to ostracise it, keeping it out of the communal huddle until it feeds a starving bat. Upon this action, they will calm down slightly but will still occasionaly ostracise it until it has repeated this action over several nights.

Great innit? You have a social crime, (being a lazy bat) you have the punishment (ostracising the lazy bat) and then you have the reformed bat doing a good deed (feeding a starving bat) in order to be re-accepted into the huddle. It would appear that vampire bats do indeed have a form of instinctual moral code.

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“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
― Marcus Aurelius